Name: Dr. Melina Claussnitzer: Genetics, Causality, and Metabolic Disease
Start: 2026-09-22T16:00:00.000-04:00
End: 2026-09-22T17:30:00.000-04:00
Location: Cambridge, MA

Connecting Boston's aging research community

Aging Initiative

The Aging Initiative is pleased to announce a translational research speaker event with 

, an Institute Member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. At the Broad, Dr. Claussnitzer directs Scientific Strategy for the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Genomic Mechanisms of Disease and serves as Director of the Broad Diabetes Initiative.

Dr. Claussnitzer’s research focuses on bridging metabolic disease genetics and causal target discovery. She pioneered the variants-to-function (V2F) framework, which systematically converts GWAS-associated risk loci into mechanistic insight using integrated experimental and computational approaches. Her work leverages large-scale human genetic data to identify and validate disease-driving targets for population-scale conditions such as obesity and type 2 diabetes.

Her contributions span both fundamental biology and therapeutic translation, including service on the scientific advisory boards of biotechnology companies such as SixPeaks Bio (acquired by AstraZeneca).